A hot dog restaurant called Willy – Yums in Bradenton, Florida has become the latest company to accept cryptocurrency as a method of payment.
Willy – Yums Opens Its Heart to Crypto
Willy – Yums opened about five years ago. It serves hot dogs, burgers, Cuban sandwiches, and many other things to tantalize one’s taste buds. The man who owns it – Rob Williams – says he was introduced to crypto through a friend and he immediately began investing through the Robinhood app.
He said in an interview:
I thought, ‘Oh, ok. I’ll put in a couple of dollars here and there, and forget about it,’ and that’s what I did.
After about five months, he checked his portfolio and was shocked to see just how much money he made. He says:
It was outrageously high. I was extremely surprised. I thought, ‘This is interesting,’ and I bought a few more.
He was particularly prone to investing in both Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin, a successful spinoff of the former. Discussing Doge, Williams says:
They call it the people’s coin. It’s inexpensive. It’s easy to get. It’s easy to share. It’s simple. It’s got a really cool mascot dog.
It wasn’t long before he began to consider accepting digital currency for his business. He comments:
I mean, I’m a hot dog stand. Hot dog. Dogecoin. Right?
The world of crypto was initially designed to overtake traditional finance. Things like bitcoin were built to push fiat currencies, checks, and credit cards to the side. Things haven’t quite worked out that way, however, given that these currencies are prone to heavy price swings and volatility. Thus, many businesses have been reluctant to accept crypto payments out of fear that they will potentially lose profit, and in many ways, we can’t really blame them.
Consider the following scenario: someone walks into a shop somewhere and decides to buy $50 worth of merchandise with bitcoin. For one reason or another, the company doesn’t trade the crypto in for fiat right away. About 24 hours go by and the price of bitcoin drops, causing that $50 to become $25. While the customer gets to keep all they’ve purchased, the company has clearly lost money. Is that a fair situation? Not everyone thinks so.
In any case, when businesses like Willy – Yums decide to accept crypto payments, they are making the space more legitimate and pushing digital currencies closer to their initial goals. Williams says he has worked to make crypto payments easy for his customers. The restaurant has a QR code displayed in the window. From there, customers can scan the code and have their crypto wallet appear.
The First One in Line
Williams says:
I was reading today that Elon Musk is pushing for McDonald’s to use Dogecoin, but I got there first.
